“EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT”: Jungle journeys

Mixing elements as diverse as “Apocalypse Now,” “Aguirre, Wrath of God” and the hallucinogenic “El Topo,” the Columbian-lensed “Embrace of the Serpent” is less a conventional narrative than a sort of head trip that audiences are invited to inhabit for two hours.

Shot in ravishing widescreen black and white and propelled by a natural soundtrack so intense you feel you’re stranded in a South American jungle, Ciro Guerra’s films tells the story of two river journeys 40 years apart.

In the years before World War I Theo (Jan Bijvoet), a German scientist and explorer, shows up in the jungle camp of Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), an astonishingly handsome young shaman who has lived most to this life in solitude. Theo is dying of a jungle fever and Karamakate, who claims that he is the last surviving member of his tribe, agrees to paddle this white man upstream to the land of his childhood, where there exists a flower whose curative powers are Theo’s only hope for survival.

That journey alternates with another river journey taking place four decades later. This time Karamakate, now an old man (and portrayed by Antonio Bolivar) accompanies an American scientist (Brionne Davis) in retracing that journey. They are searching for that same medicinal plant, although the American’s motives may be more mercenary than scientific.

Antonio Bolivar as old Karamakate

In both tales the jungle is being ravaged by rubber barons who impose their brutal will on indigineous peoples, lopping off arms to ensure that the latex keeps flowing.

And in both stories the trekkers take a brief respite at a Roman Catholic mission deep in the jungle. In the early 1900s a Capucin monk (Luigi Sciamanna) employs torture to drive the savage impulses from the Indian boys who are his charges. By the 1950s the mission has deteriorated into a madhouse presided over by a delusional fellow (Nicolas Cancino) who declares himself the son of God and holds a Jim Jones-ish control over his crazed celebrants.

Do not expect conventional storytelling or character development. Guerra — who took home the Director’s Fortnight Prize at Cannes — emphasizes the yarn’s mystical elements, a critique of colonialism’s negative influences, and an environmental message about preserving both the jungle and the Indians who inhabit it.

Inspired by the memoirs of real-life Amazonian explorers Theodor Koch-Gruenberg and Richard Evans Schultes, “Embrace of the Serpent” is perhaps 20 minutes too long. But its languid pacing and visual depiction of the jungle environment is tremendously seductive.